Washington (CNSNews.com) – Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said Thursday that President Barack Obama’s budget proposals exploit the nation’s fiscal calamities in order to create “a nanny state” of historic proportions.
 
Ryan, joined by fiscally conservative academics and fellow Republican Rep. Mike Pence, said that Obama’s budget increased government spending to record levels at the expense of solving the financial crisis gripping the country.
 
“The president’s budget does not solve our fiscal and financial crisis. The president’s budget exploits our financial crisis,” Ryan said. “The president’s budget does not seek to bring forth an opportunity for society. It’s more of an ideological document seeking to bring forth a nanny state.”
 
Ryan explained that Obama’s proposals would increase spending to historic levels and amounted to the most radical transformation of government’s role in American life since the New Deal.
 
“This budget is the biggest-spending budget we’ve seen in generations,” he said. “This budget brings the size of government to its largest levels since 1945 in its first year.”
 
Pete Sepp, vice-president of policy and communications at the National Taxpayer’s Union, who joined Ryan and Pence at the podium, saying that Obama’s budget put the country on a “slide to bankruptcy” that it might never get out of.
 
“The slide to bankruptcy is beginning a lot sooner than we think,” Sepp said. “This budget does nothing to address fundamental problems with Medicare, despite the healthcare reform proposals. This means we are looking at a much lower standard of living for the next generation.”
 
Sepp said that Obama’s other measures, particularly the $787 billion stimulus package and the recent $410 billion omnibus spending bill, only added to the nation’s fiscal woes, making things much worse if the administration’s rosy economic forecasts don’t come true.
 
“We keep passing stimulus bills and omnibus bills on borrowed money, which is only adding to the problem. Heaven help us if the economic assumptions in this budget are off by even a few points. We’ve got to get a handle on it now. This budget doesn’t do it.”
 
Pence (R-Ind.) said that Obama’s budget had three primary flaws.
 
“The truth is the president’s budget spends too much, it taxes too much and it borrows too much -- and the American people are figuring that out,” Pence said.
 
Obama and congressional Democrats are out of touch with Americans who are cutting back during the recession, he added.
 
“During these difficult economic times every American family, every small business, every family farm is making hard choices necessary to get through these difficult economic times,” Pence said.
 
“The American people are concluding that Washington, D.C., doesn’t understand what they’re dealing with,” he added.
 
Pence said the Obama administration is failing to provide leadership for America.
 
“At a time when we should be looking to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate the kind of fiscal restraint and the kind of sacrifice that every American family and every American business have demonstrated,” Pence said.
 
“Washington, D.C., and this administration have come forward with an enormous spending increase, expanding the size and scope of government into virtually every area of our national life.”
 
Ryan, meanwhile, acknowledged that Obama had inherited very difficult circumstances, but said the new president’s budget was only going to make things worse.
 
“Look, we’ve got bad times,” Ryan acknowledged, “and they inherited a difficult situation. But instead of inheriting a difficult situation and improving it, they’ve made it worse.”
 
When asked by CNSNews.com whether Obama had bitten off more than the country could chew, Ryan said that Obama’s budget was an “anti-stimulus” that sent the wrong message to America’s struggling businesses.
 
“Rolling this budget out the way they did actually hurts the economy. It tells small businesses, it tells consumers, it tells the markets: ‘guess what, big tax increases are coming.’  The rolling out of this budget was actually the epitome of an anti-stimulus bill.
 
“Bringing this budget to Congress, showing it to the American people they way they’ve done, with this explosion of taxes and spending and borrowing tells the economy and the markets: ‘it’s not going to be a good economy in the future. That is the wrong thing to do.”